Like the Whitney Plantation, also along the Great River Road, which has been restored as a way to tell the history of slavery. It retains all of its beauty and its horror. In 1811, the largest slave revolt in the US South took place there. About five hundred enslaved Africans rose up. When they were defeated, dozens of the enslaved were executed and beheaded. Their heads were planted on poles as warnings. Now, in a memorial to the insurrectionists, sixty-three heads are set before a white picket fence with twisting vines. Each face is rendered distinctly and permanently in ceramic. And yet I
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